Chumby RSS reader

Chumbies are are awesome. RSS feeds are awesome. Why not combine the two? No, the double awesomeness won't hurt anyone, really. The reason is that flash is hard for the unexperienced. Here is a simple way to do it with an already-written program.

I will model it with Instructables, and you should be ready to adjust it according to your needs!

Thanks ewilhelm for the photos!

Step 1 Make sure you can compile Flash!

If you have a Flash developer IDE (I.E. Flash MX), NOT JUST A FLASH PLAYER, then you are all set. If not, look around. If you are a student, the school may have it, someone around work may have it.

If not, I'm sure a group of flash-makers will form in the comments and will be happy to do it for you.

NOTE: My photos were taken on Flash Pro 8, so it may look slightly different than what you are using, but the basic principles are the same.

Comments

[zjharva]

hey would flash develop work for this, it is a free flash software. o and also could you make an instructable going over the basics of how to code in flash to make stuff?

[zachninme]

Flash develop will work, but you won't be able to easily draw shapes, as you have to do the entire thing in Actionscript. Actionscript, the code in Flash, is too big of a topic to be discussed here. However, I'm sure you can find some examples/tutorials on the web ;-)

[zjharva]

o. too bad

[zjharva]

yay got my chumby today! heres how to make chumby truly wireless http://www.instructables.com/id/Wireless-Chumby!/

[binnie]

where can i get a chumby? and how much i know they arnt on sale yet is there another way?

[robot_ninja]

just google chumby lol

[zachninme]

I added some code to the resizing part to minimize CPU usage :-)

[Jack Daniels]

this seems like another one of those pointless peaces of crap you see for a month after launch then never see again (the instructable is good thought)

[westfw]

Ah yeah, there here-again, gone-again "Internet Appliance." Eventually someone will do it right and they'll be as common as clock radios. Wireless is a step in the right direction, probably.

[zachninme]

I assume you mean the Chumby... Actually, the idea sounds cool. I'd like to view stuff like feeds while not on a computer. I don't know if it will catch on, though...

[ewilhelm]

Another cool note about this Instructable is that it's the first collaboration I've worked on that went approximately like I envisioned the system working. Zachninme and I have never met in person; we've only communicated through messages on Instructables. He offered to help me out with the Chumby, wrote the code, and started a collaboration with me; I loaded the code on the chumby, took pictures, and added the pictures to the Instructable's image library (which allows us to share pictures across our respective image libraries). Now, here it is. Pretty cool, huh?

[trebuchet03]

out of curiosity... how did you acquire said chumby?

[ewilhelm]

I got one as a beta (maybe alpha?) tester. I played with it for a while, but found I was never going to have a chance to do anything really fun with it, so on my orangeboard I offered it to whomever would write an Instructables widget and document the process.

[zachninme]

I didn't... ewilhelm got the pictures for me. Mann I wish I had one, though!

[Crash2108]

What the hell is a chumby?

[ewilhelm]

http://chumby.com/

I received one of the alpha-versions at a conference and Zachninme helped get the Instructables feed on it.

[Crash2108]

I signed up for one. Do you have an obligation to do something useful with it?

[ewilhelm]

No way! Mine shows the latest stories from Google news among other things and acts as a major distraction during meetings. You also set it to show your Flickr stream.

[muller]

Please don't tease us that have been waiting for the Chumby for months. They won't be available commercially until spring. This is just a tease and it's mean. ;)

[zachninme]

Hey, I don't have one either! This pains me too!